Hot on the heels of Marko Ivanović’s Enchantia, the National Theatre has another brand-new opera in store. Vladimír Franz (1959), an eminent Czech composer and painter, holder of six Alfred Radok Awards, has chosen to set to music Karel Čapek’s celebrated novel War with the Newts. Franz wrote the opera in 2005 to commission for the National Theatre. The librettist Rostislav Křivánek used the lyrics of three songs by Jiří Suchý. The opera’s creators were above all intrigued by the novel’s theme of the endless human inability to realise nascent danger, the arrogant self-confidence and assumption of superiority of the human race, convinced as it is that it is capable of mastering everything that it creates. They were captivated by the theme of human adhesion to material gain, the belief that rising standards of living justify any means.

Opera is staged in czech language and czech and english surtitles are used in the performance.